If you want an SD Card for your camera - these are the ones I use and recommend.

I'd strongly recommend not to buy any SD cards off ebay - I've heard about too many issues with counterfeit cards - often sold on by unwitting resellers. My inbox regularly gets messages from people who bought a £150 camera then cheaped out and bought a £3 memory card on ebay - Then when it doesn't worth they blame the camera! It doesn't make any sense. Good memory is cheaper than it's ever been - see the links above.

A lot of HD cameras will not work properly with cards larger than 32GB (cards over 32GB are usually SDXC rather than the SDHC standard used by 32GB cards. SDXC cards use the ex-FAT system rather than FAT32 - in short they are a different standard). - so don't just buy the biggest card you can afford - read the specs in the manual to see what it accepts.

VERY IMPORTANT. These links go to the product, but Amazon have three different ways of selling. There's Amazon Direct - This means that you are only dealing with Amazon themselves, then there's other sellers that use Amazon's facilities - these show as Fulfilled By Amazon and finally there's Market place sellers that advertise on Amazon, but operate independently. I strongly recommend that you only use the first...the Amazon Direct - Sold By Amazon option. Even if it appears that you are paying a couple of £/$ more it is more than likely you are comparing the going rate for a real item against the price of a fake one that won't work.

As an example of the extent of the problem of fake goods online...In a recent survey by Apple - 90% of the 'Apple' chargers sold by Amazon - using the other the two methods..which includes the "Fulfilled by Amazon" option - were found to be counterfeit....90%!

For obvious reasons I can't tell you whether you would enjoy the taste of the coffee produced by this machine. I can however express my personal opinion, of the machine and its abilities so here it is.

I bought this machine during a half-price sale at Staples for £50 because I thought it would be an interesting thing to review, and I hadn't seen any other reviews of this online. It's a different take on a single-cup coffee machine, as it uses coffee made using the current fad of mixing in Micro Grind whole-beans with freeze dried instant. In my opinion this is the Emperor's Clothes of coffee, a way to re-market instant coffee at crazily high prices. My taste buds are not great. I can't identify a Sumatran from a Columbian from an Ethiopian coffee by taste. But I can spot the difference between an instant, a filter and an Americano. The coffee this machine produces tastes to me like good quality instant.

I've pretty much finished my 'free' refill cartridge now, and I won't be buying another. If the price of refills was more realistic, say £5, then I may well have stuck with this machine a bit longer. It is convenient and neat and the coffee whilst not great is passable, certainly respectable enough for me to quickly gulp down before setting off for work.

However the machine is now back up to £100 and the refills are £13…..so at that price it's a complete non-starter. I suspect that without a massive price shift, this product's days are numbered. Expect to find these cluttering up the bargain bins at your office supplies retailer in a few months.

Reader Comments (34)

Fantastic review, you have a knack of producing addictive interesting videos, thank you! I quite like the micro ground coffees as a step up from instants if the supermarkets have them on reduced (only). Starbucks tastes the best but is a ridiculous price unless they're giving it away for free. Best of luck and thanks again :)

@Dave I agree that the micro grind coffee definitely tastes better than plain old instant. I'm not a coffee snob, but I really can't stomach normal instant. I always have a tin of the microgrind in the house, its great for coffee emergencies.

Nespresso pods are pretty badly priced too, plus there's a limited source to get them from - either online direct or in one of the very few 'special places' for George Clooney. We've stopped using ours and just use the milk fluffer and micro grind coffee - not quite the same but then not quite the same price.

It's a bit odd that you do moan about the prices though, for someone who clearly goes to starbucks quite a bit. Have you tried http://www.hasbean.co.uk/ ? - although you'll probably need a 2nd mortgage for that :/

Now, when are you going to review that NC700 ? All the reviews I've seen have been pretty crap. Looking forward to a decent one. Does it have the dual clutch? If so, how does it affect riding?

Nespresso's exclusivity has now expired, so third party pods are starting to appear. You can get some in Costco now.

My Starbucks mugs were a Christmas gift, although I do go there from time to time, a couple of times per month.

You'll be glad to know that I was filming some stuff for the NC700 review today. I've also figured out how to do a commentary whilst riding now and I'll be utilising the bullet cam for some interesting angles. This one will take weeks to put together. Things will probably go quiet here until it's done

I'm not a coffee drinker either but I'm a little surprised that we didn't get a comparison to: "a benighted piece of equipment produced by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation. It was called a Nutri-Matic Drinks Synthesizer". Still, an awesome revew.

I'm not a coffee drinker so some of this coffee culture has bypassed me. What's the deal with all this americano, cappa-mocha-chino nonsense. As far as I'm concerned there are two types of coffee - black or white. I'm prepared to accept espresso as another variation on the basis that it uses a different blend of beans, but here everything comes from the same source so essentially it's just a small strong black coffee.

To me, having to refill the water container every two cups makes the device completely pointless. You may as just use a normal kettle, especially if the blend of coffee really is just barely better than instant.

One thing I thought you should have included in the review though - if there is nothing special about the coffee how does the cost per cup compare against a kettle and a good quality jar of instant/micro-grind?

One last question, as I believe is obligatory for any review on the this blog - can you use it as a webcam? ;o)

Just bought the Alegria today from Staples for £60 which included a free coffee refill cartridge. I already have the Dolce Gusto but found I really dislike the taste of the powdered milk (I like latte), Hoping this might be better because I can use fresh milk. If anyone can recommend a good decaf alternative to use instead of the Nescafe refill cartridge I would love to know.

Good review- I very nearly bought one of these the other day in staples but was put off by the lack of clarity about how on earth a pot of coffee grounds could turn into cappuccino....you've cleared that up nicely. Glad I didn't buy one now. Some years ago I purchased a machine that used instant coffee to make cappuccino, but the coffee all gunked up inside as the storage put was not airtight- but it was great at frothing the milk- they've solved that problem with this machine but taken a step backwards on the milk.

First time I have seen one of your reviews. Thank you for something light-hearted, informative and very well produced. Shame about the Alegria - I was thinking of getting one! - but I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for your reviews in future.

I bought one the other day. It makes everything so effortless, which is great (the main reason i bought it). The thing that puts me off though, is that every cup comes out luke warm. I find myself first heating the milk, which seems counter intuitive.

I bought the Allegra for Christmas. I am not a coffee afficionado but I love the taste and the ease of making any style. The refills are a lot cheaper than the pods and most of my coffee loving friends approve too (or else they are being nice!)

I love my Alegria machine but the coffee is a silly price and not that special...I have experimented with many different coffeess in my Alegria machine and all work great. But only use granules not powder. I have found bog standard (and cheap) nescafe does really well and has a surprisingly good crema layer.

Here is the clever bit..... don't through away your empty Alegria cartridge.... keep it, cut the bottom off, and use it as a funnel to fill the machine.... without the special top to the Alegria cartridge filling the machine is awkward.

Have fun, experiment with the coffee.... and never sleep again! Like me. (2:22am)

Update - have had my Alegria since September 2012 and really disliked the Nescafé coffee you are supposed to use. Have tried a few different decaf ones and the one I prefer is the Kenco Milicano Decaf - it works very well in the machine. Only negative with the Alegria is that the finished drink is not hot enough if the hot water jet is used to heat and froth the milk - I now heat the milk in the microwave first. Still a very good machine for the £60 (including a Nescafé coffee cartridge) I paid for it. A large funnel works well to refill the coffee container if you don't haven't kept the original empty Nescafé cartridge.

Bought mine for use in the lunch room at work - now use Robert Harris freeze dried blends - 1/3 price of the Nescafe - microwave the milk first for a real hot frothy drink - we all prefer the results to "normal instant coffee" . I now look forward to my daily caffeine fix I am obviously not a coffee snob. Just pull the rubber cap out and pour straight out of the packet - no problems in 6 months.

I recently got a machine for my birthday. In South Africa it still quite new and subsequently still very expensive.

It worked great for like week one, and now produces piss cold coffee, no matter what we do. Has anyone else had this problem? The seems as though the machine skips the warm-up process and goes straight to shooting cold water into the cup.

We regrettably don't have the receipt anymore, so I can't return it :-(

My husband is the only coffee drinker in the house and we bought one of these from Staples about 18 months ago when it was on offer. The machine is great if you are regularly making coffee for 1. No fiddly capsules to store just a canister to top up about once a month. The Alegria coffee is quite expensive so we have experimented with other types and settled on Milicano for now, we kept an original canister for easy filling but a funnel would also work.

I refill this by taking the bottom off the coffee container off and filling it with either Gold Blend barista style or Carte Noire Instinct and it works perfectly :) I paid £69.99 and it came with the 2L kit in the box. I mainly use it for espresso's and americano's though because the frothed milk is bloody awful in my opinion. Although the latte is bearable if I use a big enough cup and add a single espresso to it.

I bought this to replace my Bosch Tassimo after they fell out with Starbucks and disc prices went up and up. The coffee to me tastes like instant coffee and I hate it compared to the tassimo, I too refill it using a barista style instant to keep the cost down and find it tastes better than the Nescafe refills. I will be replacing it as soon as I can convince the wife

Hi Mat,Nestlé has released a similar type of machine called Nescafé Barista. It's though made for normal instant coffee. ATM you can get it for free if you buy 6 Nescafé instant coffees. The machine looks like it can do exactly the same as the Alegría except it uses normal Nescafé.

I just picked up the machine for free from Staples when I bought 3 coffee canisters for £29! Bargain and thanks to this thread I won't be filling it up with the expensive nescafe coffee. This offer is on for the rest of April but staples are struggling to get hold of the canisters.